Questions About 16 Year Old Suspected Suicide Bombers

There's a really strange case about two 16 year-old girls being held because the federal authorities are suspicious that they might be suicide bombers. First reported in the NY Times yesterday, there are very few details, just that the two girls, one Bangladeshi, the other Guineanese, were arrested last month and have been held at a Pennsylvania detention center, and that they girls were Muslim and sympathetic to Islamic culture and causes. The Daily News reports that one FBI official says, "We've got a lot of dots that people shouldn't be connecting," but other officials say that when the Bangladeshi girl's parents filed a complaint against her (they were worried she was running away to get married), the girls were already under investigation.

The NY Times had been approached by Adam Carroll of the Islamic Circle of North America "on behalf of the parents [of the Bangladeshi's girl]"; Carroll said it seemed like "an investigation that's gotten out of hand, like a lot of other so-called terror investigations." Today, there's another story in the Times about the girl, her recent interest in Islam, and her family; the kicker is that the girl was told that her parents, illegal immigrants, may be deported to Bangladesh while her younger siblings born in the U.S. would be placed in foster care if she didn't confess to terrorist ties.